Applicants' apparatus and devices relate to apparatus and devices for moving and transporting one or more objects or cargo. Applicants' apparatus and devices have particular application for carts and other vehicles used to move or transport objects or cargo across areas covered with sand or other loose, granular materials, including, but not limited to beach carts.
Many beach cart designs suffer from a variety of design defects and problems. For example, some beach carts use relatively small wheels, which contribute to overall compactness but perform poorly in the sand. Other beach carts sacrifice compactness for better performance by using large balloon-type wheels. The former cart type readily sinks in the sand due to insufficient wheel bearing area and tends to have a plowing or furrowing action. This makes it difficult and exhausting for users to transport loads through loose sand. The latter cart type utilizes large balloon-type tires to maintain an increased bearing area to resist sinking in loose sand, but such beach carts are large and bulky, making it cumbersome or even impossible to bring such carts to the beach, depending on a user's vehicle size. Neither beach cart type effectively provides a combination of compactness and increased bearing area enabling rolling over loose sand effectively under heavy load.
Some examples of beach carts that have the above-described problems and other problems are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,264,230 (Huggins); U.S. Pat. No. 6,988,337 (Clark); U.S. Pat. No. 3,677,571 (Maturo, Jr. et al.); and U.S. Pat. No. 5,660,403 (O'Neal et al.).